Learning How to Learn Overview

The core points so far:

Analogy

Analogy works best for learning. The example given in the course is that the mind is like a pinball machine. Imagine the many bumpers as ideas that the ball can bounce along to make connections. Focused learning has bumpers closer together than diffuse learning.

Another analogy is that learning is like building a wall. You have to let the ‘mortar’ settle and the foundation solidify. This take learning things in smaller bits, over time, rather than cramming (this would be building the wall in one night and so it collapses under the weight of so much brick on unsolid mortar!!)

Focus versus Diffuse

These are ways the mind works. We all know focused: this is the classic idea of studying something with as full attention as possible. Like in a library, with that A/C sound humming the background, until you are reading the same line over and over and over and slowly falllll asleeeeeeezzzzZZZzzzzzzz. I kid I kid! Of course we all know this. This is the classic exam time in University where you study and study. And of course 'learn'

Diffuse is that way of thinking you do when you are not really thinking. It’s akin to the mind making subconscious (I hate that word, but more on that later) connections between ideas. Maybe even this is that ‘A-HA!' mechanism at work here, the mechanism that we hear so much about with the geniuses.

Importance of Diffuse

It allows the focused bits of information to be organized and absorbed and eventually take shape into ‘chunks’ of ideas that help you to one day become a ‘master’.

More points to cover.

There’s more, but I’m going to follow the course methodology and go watch an episode of Broadchurch and let it all settle in there.

Importance of Sleeping

Chunking

Mind Chemicals involved in Learning

Procrastination/the overcoming of dotdotdot

A Little Bit about reading ritin' and rithmatic

I'm taking a course on Learning How to Learn  by Dr Barbara Oakley

One of the assignments is to post something about what you have learned, to help others learn as well.

This is an excellent idea, and so the next posts will be somewhat about this.

It might inspire me to post some of my other assignments from some of the other courses I've taken.

I say 'somewhat' since this is a blog about many other things than just learning... but it's about learning as well.


This is, as you recall, the 50 Coursera Challenge from Altucher.

Another day for you and me in Paradise

Apologies blogland.wonderland. Maybe miss.so.and.so was right, and this IS the blog I’m never going to post in again…

Welp, it’s a little over a year since I started the daily practice routine. Not sure what I can say about it that's simple and easy and won't be a 5000 word essay.. there’s good, and bad (OCD, my friends.. how many times can you flip that lightswitch on and off) and indifferent.

I’m going to say overall.. good. I’ll try to explain over the course of a few posts. A lot to cover but I want to say one thing that's happened is that it’s made me very conscious that trying to cover off on 200plus things in one day is a wee bit ambitious ₁

ie, here’s the math… not counting an hour to relax, 1 for food, 1 for ‘ablutions’ for prepping for work, 2 for traveling to and from work, 6 for sleep, 1 to ‘decompress’, there’s about 12 hours killed there. 8 for work and we’re at 20 hours. So let’s be generous, and leave out chores.. and you have 4 hours to do whatever. That’s 240 minutes, leaving a little over a minute for each thing on my list of things to make me a better person… and this list includes things like watching MOOC videos on Calculus, playing a quick game of chess, reading a spiritual blog, listening to a philosophy podcast, playing with my dogs… You’d have to be insanely focused and have an almost surgical precision at triage to do it all effectively..

Anyway.. This is my progress to date...


1 231 to be exact

Day 100 post

I've already galloped past day 100. I wanted to post another 'hurrah look at my progress!!' post.

But here we are at day 105 or something, and I pretty much feel the same ₁…
anyhoo, in the spirit of blogin regularly, I give you this:

I haven't been able to find my bucket list (or 50 things to do before I die). However, I made it in my 20's, so it's likely I'm not going tour with Black Flag, and maybe best I let it lie.

If I find it I’ll post it for shits and giggles, but otherwise...

I give you this.. Altucher's challenge from his excellent blog 'the Confidentials'

from Ways to trick your kid into not going to college ...

“And it’s not all about money. The below challenges will make them healthier, more creative, wealthier, etc, depending on what they do. And none of the below requires that much money.

They will also have the pleasure of doing something that is utterly unique and will ultimately be considered cool or fascinating in their social group.

A) Make a youtube video (or channel) that has five million real views.
B ) Get past the second series of Ashtanga Yoga. (at least part of this has to occur in India).
C) Make a business that has over $50,000 in revenues in the 12th month.
D) Write a book (or set of books) that has more than 5000 paying readers
E) Create a blog that has over 100,000 unique monthly readers. Note: you don’t have to be the only writer on that blog.
F) Take 50 or more courses on Coursera. With me.
G) Intern with someone who is among the best in the world at what they do.
H) Organize at least 20 meetups of twenty people or more around a specific topic.
I) Run for political office and get at least 30% of the vote in a primary.
J) Have 50 people write to me explaining, in detail, how you saved their lives.”

Not a bad list to start off with…


1 i.e. I’m here, I’m alive, get used to it

60 day blog post

I intended to post something 60 days in, a sort of a 'hey, look how things have changed'

I'm now on day 91 for some of my day to day tasks. Soooo easy to blow by a milestone.

As they say... the hours get shorter as the time goes by...

or something like that.

It's been an interesting ride. I still have 2 or three things I haven't started that mock me each time I look to update. And the majority of what I'm focused on is health, eating, and physical stuff. Nothing that will make me a millionaire or reach enlightenment.

(note, there's always crossover between working out and spiritual with me, since I do martial arts and yoga, and spiritual and emotional since I do exercises to free the mind of emotional baggage a la buddhism)

I'm really suckin' at the idea generation. I'm pretty much faking it.

Some days I feel particularly manic, and other days lethargic. But I still get most of the day to day ablutions done...

Would love to introduce more 'meat' into my education, and mental challenges, as well as truly, truly enjoy the fun stuff in my life.

Anyway, as one of my bosses used to say, onward through the fog!

Let There be Rock - the spiritual practice

I spent the weekend with in-laws and family and some aussies at my sister's wedding. I come from a family that appreciated something I’ll deem 80’s hair metal, if you will allow me that leeway.₁

Sometimes when I visit, we’ll play Rockband, and we’ll crack out Supertramp or Journey songs…. when we’re feeling ballady.

Now with tdp, there’s a spiritual element: ‘reading something spiritual each day’

Studying. If I read a spiritual text (doesn’t matter what it is: Bible, Tao Te Ching, anything Zen related, even inspirational self-help stuff, doesn’t matter) I tend to feel good. This is not as powerful as praying or meditating (it doesn’t train your mind to cut out the BS) but it still makes me feel good.

From: Altucher's how-to-be-the-luckiest-guy-on-the-planet post

Usually for me it’s reading something about EFT or Yoga. Something like that. But every once in a while I like to listen to ear splitting rock n roll, and appreciate it for it’s pure primal energy..

So I count it when I do, and usually I listen to AC/DC let there be rock.

You bet! Sometimes you just gotta, you know? You just gotta.

1 Cause some of it was just rock n roll.

Monkey Mind

I started off with the usual  groups, Emotional, Physical, Spiritual, Mental. but already my monkey mind was trying to recategorize…

Is Yoga spiritual? Physical? Is eating well Physical? Or should Eating become it's own category, and Physical be reserved for 'working out' activities?

Does stretching then become Physical, or should it be 'Health' (like fasts). Whereas Yoga is a kind of stretching?

And hell, shouldn’t some of the mental be about learning new things for work? Should I have a work category so tdp doesn't distract me too much form my actual work?

Or the 4 HourWorkWeek idea of doing in less time, more? Should I challenge myself to do intense discrete chunks of 'work' as part of this?

Like make a most urgent thing I'm avoiding doing and block time to do it? And top 3 things I really need to get done but keep putting off. And that way stay focused and on point for them?

And spiritual? Back to that… I study lots of spiritual stuff that a normal person wouldn’t consider spiritual. For instance Buddhism is about doing, not reading!! It's about meditation, not 'thinking about it'. So does reading about it really count? Or is that more of an intellectual activity?

And the suggested "read a wiki article a day". Is that intellectual, or feeding your idea machine?

Then  things like Lumosity, for instance... Maybe I want weekends off of doing all this 5 minutes of tracking this and that. Maybe I don't always want to be doing mind games?

Categorization: a great monkey mind trait.

…but really…. everything’s interrelated..

Now: is that article yoga? or mental? or consciousness in a spiritual sense?